Words

Waiting

~ towles ~ 2 Comments

1516429596_298747cdb8.jpg

I have never been a very patient person, especially if the things on which I wait seem even remotely in my own control. It’s one thing to have to wait in line at the post office or at an amusement park, but quite another for me to have to wait on myself or my brain to do whatever it has been called on to do.

Growing up, I played the piano. In high school, I especially loved to perform big, dramatic pieces with lots of running eighth notes, but the process of learning the music nearly killed me. As I sat at the keyboard, day after day, learning slowly how to make my fingers conform to the patterns on the page of music in front of me, I wished away my practice time. I begrudged the discipline of hands-separately-then-together, longing for the moment when I would finally get it and the music would flow effortlessly, joyfully out of my fingertips.

This impatience is also often reflected in the discipline I bring to my writing. I am ridiculously intimidated by the blank page and equally frustrated by nonfiction writing’s dependence upon slow research. If I find myself in the middle of writing an essay and realize I need to go back and do more research, I feel like an Everest climber who’s made it half way to the summit, only to realize he didn’t pack enough oxygen to get to the top.

The necessity of having patience in all things makes me a little crazy. I want to jump in head first, roll up my sleeves, and get things done right. At times, patience feels so unproductive that I fool myself into believing that everything would be more fun and/or rewarding if I performed perfectly the first time around. Yet, too often, I overlook the fact that the main reason a flawlessly played Ballade or a well-crafted essay feels so satisfying is due to the work of getting there: without practice, the ligaments in my hands wouldn’t know how far to stretch; my brain wouldn’t rejoice in ideas formed under pressure; my self wouldn’t believe I could be pushed – successfully – to the limits of my abilities, and it wouldn’t even consider taking on the stretch of tougher goals ahead.

This aversion to patience – and what I have to learn from it – has some bearing on my current state of being. After nine months of baby building, I feel I’ve done my time; another week spent in this bubble bodysuit and Playskool will be redesigning Weeble Wobbles to resemble me! This week, I have been willing the pain of contractions, hoping – with little success – that one will lead to another in quick succession. I imagine myself as my body’s spin class instructor, shouting excitedly into my cavernous womb to get moving and lean in to the pain, to let my techno heartbeat put an end to all this pregnancy madness.

Nevertheless, I’ve learned enough about the discipline of waiting to know that there’s good to come on the other side of patience and that these long, impervious days will fade quickly into joy (and relief) as soon as Baby K makes his or her debut. The downside of this is that his or her arrival will only present a long list of more things about which I must be patient, but that’s a worry for another day. And besides, if I had nothing left to learn or wait on, I probably also wouldn’t have anything to write about, and that would be very sad indeed.

SeymourCornelius

~ towles ~ Leave a comment

sc-logo-abb.jpg

The doctor yesterday said the baby could arrive “at any time” and I have thus been totally preoccupied by that statement’s many meanings for my life … too preoccupied to do anything productive and/or suitably creative for myself or any of you. Sorry. I would feel bad about this were it not for my sister and brother-in-law’s recent creative launch – SeymourCornelius.

As my own creativity is waning (temporarily, I hope/think), Team Goodrich has come to rescue my blog-readers from boredom/disappointment. Take yourself on a little artist’s date: visit their new, beautiful, cool, well-soundtracked Web site. I would write more, but SeymourCornelius speaks for itself.

Enjoy!

Gourmet Goes South

~ towles ~ 1 Comment

144134671_2e6038fb20.jpg

“There is something about the South that stimulates creativity in people, be they black or white writers, artists, cooks, builders, or primitives that pass away without knowing they were talented.” – Edna Lewis, “What is Southern?”

Thanks to the internet and the graciousness with which epicurean magazines publish their recipes online, I have come to think of buying foodie mags as a real luxury. I don’t aspire to be a food writer so that’s not a good excuse to shell out $4 per cover, but I gravitate towards the publications’ alluring photos and delicious-sounding recipes, to which the Internet does only partial justice. Once I’ve bought these precious pubs, I keep them for a long time – much longer than necessary – the way unseemly old men keep copies of Hustler and Playboy, stashed away for future feasts and (epicurean) fantasies.

So, like any addict who knows the danger of giving in to her weaknesses, I try to practice restraint in the cooking magazine aisle. But something about Gourmet gets me. I love the swirly, Coca-Cola-like cover-title writing, the luscious-sounding feature recipes, the impression of myself as a very-accomplished-cook-indeed upon execution of the pub’s more complicated dishes. Still – I try to keep my distance. I remind myself that I have a problem, that I own plenty of cookbooks, that I recently gave a truck load of (cooking) magazines away to the American Kidney Fund.

174005705_7ccb979cbd_m.jpg

But this January’s issue of Gourmet – a “Special Collector’s Edition” featuring both Southern cooks (Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock in particular), and Southern writers (Ann Patchett – an old fave) – sent me completely over-the-top.

The writing in this issue is especially good, alive with colorful prose and the sort of Southern delicacies that must make all those New York foodies (who actually subscribe to Gourmet) seriously consider carpet-bagging. The cover photo pays homage to the perfect biscuit and sumptuous blackberry jam; inside, Hoppin’ John, Baked Tomatoes with Crusty Bread, and creamed collards (or winter greens) highlight the best of the South, conjuring, for me at least, the American pinnacle of food-as-experience, food-as-memory.

I come from a long line of wonderful cooks and cooking influences, all of whom are (or were) Southern and who embrace(d) the region’s culinary offerings with zeal. My grandmother, Doll, made the best homemade rolls South of the Mason-Dixon line – and taught my mother to make the same; Stell, the lady who kept me when I was just barely old enough to reach the kitchen counter, made sweet, warm, hand-squashed grape jelly that still makes my mouth water; my father cured his own country ham and sausage, and people from one end of Virginia to the other claimed they’d never tasted any better.

But the thing about all this food – like any good food – is its transcendent quality. In our house, the food and its preparation became dinner table conversation. Analysis of what did or did not go into certain dishes could entertain my family members for an entire meal. And thus, it became a memory made. It became experience shared; a generous gift to guests, hand-made and carefully measured. It became an outpouring of more than just flour and sugar, but of heritage and heart-felt celebration.

I love to cook, and to read about cooking, not just for the deliciousness of the food, but for its deeper meanings and its meaningfulness. A lot of chefs believe in food science, and I’m sure I could learn a lot from them, but in the South it seems we may be more about food-poetry, or food-religion.  I remember reading Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate and, thanks to my Southern roots, recognizing something universally true about the Latin American book’s magical realism; for me, cooking has always been tied to a sort of unavoidable emotional outpouring and it seemed perfectly rational for a cook’s emotional turmoil (and cuisine) to affect his or her dinner guests for better or for worse.

In January’s Gourmet, there appears an essay by Edna Lewis called “What is Southern?”. From time to time she references Southern writers (Truman Capote, Carson McCullers) and artists (Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith), but her most memorable passages embody with down-home eloquence the food she spent a lifetime perfecting. “Southern is a great yeast roll,” she writes, “the dough put down overnight to rise and the next morning shaped into rolls and baked. Served hot from the oven, they are light as a dandelion in a high wind. Southern is a sun dog – something like a rainbow, or the man in the moon – on a late summer afternoon. Southern is a mint julep. A goblet of crushed ice with a sprig of mint tucked in the side of a glass …”.

In Miss Lewis’ words and her passion for good Southern food is deference to and admiration for the culture that created her. Reading her essay makes me wish I’d known her, or that she’d written more, and it gives me new-found respect for Southern hospitality.

Southern hospitality can sometimes conjure images of white-gloved ladies, lots of sterling silver and general insincerity. But when paired with down-home Southern food, those gloves come off. (After all, who can eat fried chicken while wearing white gloves?) The combination of Southern hospitality and Southern food is a cook’s sincereist form of flattery to his guests; there is nothing more to-the-point.

I’ve gone on too long here (maybe I’m an aspiring food-writer after all!), but – you have to admit – there’s something about Buttermilk Cookies and pimiento cheese that is just downright laudable.  Take my advice and go get January’s Gourmet before it leaves the newsstand. Heaven knows I won’t let you borrow mine.

505315688_0f4bce1196.jpg

Space

~ towles ~ 1 Comment

100_1256.jpg

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
– Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)

Readers, I apologize for the 10 day lapse in blog postings. I hope some of you are still hanging in there with me. I did not have the baby, as some might have wondered, but simply have not had anything to say for the past week or so.

This weekend, just three weeks away from D-Day, we put the finishing touches on the nursery, which used to be my office, and transformed a corner in our guest bedroom into my new workspace (see above photo). In the past, I’ve had grandiose ideas about the place in which I might best write, imagining a small, sparsely-decorated shed in our back yard with French doors, a lot of sunlight and fresh air, or a nice, bright corner room (in some other, bigger house) with ample desk and bookshelf space and inspiring prints/quotations/magazines/journals/art strewn haphazardly around the place.

While I recognize these imaginings as pure vanity, the thought of cramming my beloved books and necessary files in this tiny guest bedroom corner has still depressed me. I knew it was coming, but hadn’t had the energy or the strength to face it. I’ve been using our living room as an office, perching myself Indian-style on the couch (with Ivy by my side) for hours on end, covering our too-large coffee table with reading materials and the Mac, cluttering the biggest room of our home (which is still rather small) with papers, receipts, and whatever shoes I might kick off in the throws of creative process.

This weekend, APK put an end to all that nonsense. He claimed his own nesting instincts with such enthusiasm he really could have been in his own male-style pregnancy trimester. From the glider in the nursery, I watched as he cleaned out closets, shoving two bags of golf clubs, old briefcases, keepsake boxes and random junk into unspecified locations. He artfully reorganized my bookshelf, rearranged furniture, created a make-shift file cabinet for me out of a little table with hidden trunk-space. By the time Andrew was finished, the guest bedroom corner looked way more professional and organized than my previous “office” (a real catchall room) and was far cozier. Thanks to his efforts, I’ve spent the morning comfortably confined by a real desk in front of a window with a hot cup of tea, plenty of books within reach, and Ivy still beside me.

Throughout my pregnancy, I have been the uneasy recipient of well-meaning ladies’ commentaries on how “life will never be the same” once the child arrives, and intensely annoyed by other misguided attempts at humor in which young mothers claim I’ll want to “put the baby back in the womb” once I’ve had it at home for a few days. Gee, thanks – all that sounds like a lot of fun. (To which these people would respond, “Oh, it is fun, so much fun. It’s just a different kind of fun.”)

So it’s no surprise that fixing up a permanent space for my pre-baby self – the self with a writerly bent and time for creativity – has made me feel as though I am claiming a space, however tiny, that will remind me of what I feel called to. It was silly of me to think that a tangible space would make or break my creativity – a means of procrastination I relied on too easily – or to fear that having the baby take over my old office was a metaphor for him/her taking over my brain space/life/general sense of sanity.

In the end, after all this dithering about where my “stuff” would go and where I might be inspired, I’ve discovered that my physical space could be a table at a coffee shop, or a local library carel, or underneath a tree. As long as it feels like it’s “mine,” the details don’t matter much. The more vital lesson here is that I (and any other writer, regardless of motherhood or other life swings) give myself to the mental space of the work, that I make wiser use of my time, that I hole up in whatever sliver of space exists, do what I have been trained to do, and enjoy it.

Narrative – A Magazine Review

~ towles ~ 2 Comments

I’d planned on reviewing Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a novel by the young and talented (and beautiful) Marisha Pessl, but I couldn’t get through it in time. I blame this not on the writer, but on my own brain’s current fitful, circuitous state. My mother-in-law and mother, two women whose literary opinions I hold in high esteem, both thought the book was brilliant. It just wasn’t linear enough or short enough for me right now and I needed to give myself permission to put it down.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with magazines lately, both as a means of planning submissions and as a source for inspiration. Narrative Magazine is an online literary journal; in its five years of existence, it has blazed a path of great prestige in the online world. To say you have been published by them means that you are Well On Your Way (if you aren’t already There); in the journal’s current issue are essays by Gail Godwin and Bill Barich, both Guggenheim fellows, fiction by a woman named Ann Pancake, who I happily discovered a few years ago, and poetry by Ted Kooser – the US poet laureate from 2004-2006 – among others.

Whether the writing featured in Narrative is by Guggenheim fellows or by up-and-comers, I’ve found it is consistently engaging, moving, solid and smart. Yesterday, I read a piece by Wendy Sanford called “Bodies.” It depressed me. In fact, it depressed me and the depression stayed with me – which is always proof of good writing. This morning, I read the magazine’s excerpt of Gail Godwin’s “Solo Notes,” and got inspired – and the inspiration has stayed with me. I will feast upon Narrative’s pages until I’ve read each piece even if its writing makes me angry for an entire day, or wistful, because there is such joy and satisfaction that comes from reading good sentences, such affirmation to be found in reading about Things That Matter.

In my opinion, there are few magazines – in print or online – that offer readers such fine work with such consistency. The Establishment once dismissed online publishing as unsophisticated – akin to self-publishing and self-promotion – but we are living in a digital age, and digital media has begun to become very sophisticated, indeed. Best of all, Narrative is free!

Yellow Bird

~ towles ~ 3 Comments

480654230_918d32fbb8.jpg

When I was in first grade, my classroom was divided into three groups: yellow birds, blue birds and red birds.  Although no one ever actually said so, it was clear that the yellow birds flew more slowly than the blues, and that the red birds took to the sky most quickly.  This was my teacher’s gentle way of helping young students take to learning at a pace best suited for them.

I was a red bird, but I loved the color yellow – and perfect, chirping yellow birds – and I thought it unfair that I couldn’t sit at the yellow bird table.  Mrs. Hogston, my first grade teacher – a tiny woman with smile lines around her eyes  and a sweet Southern accent – assured me that I should be a happy little red bird, proud of my feathers, and insisted that I stay at the red bird table.  I did so, but begrudgingly, learning how to add and subtract with one eye on the yellow bird table and the other on my text books.

For most of my life, I’ve kept pace with the red birds and I learned to enjoy it.   Yet, now, at a time when I would most like to be dive bombing with a flock of cardinals, I fear my feathers are turning … well … a tinge of yellow.  I’d heard that pregnancy might do this to me, that words would mysteriously slip away; that I might suffer memory loss; that I might – on occasion – make sense only to myself.  But my little red bird brain eschewed such notions as an old wives tale.  It promised to keep processing the material and meaning of life with utmost efficiency; word retrieval problems were for other sorts of pregnant people — not writers, not teachers, not red birds.    

Yet, as I sit composing this blog posting in Starbucks – writing, and then deleting, and then rewriting and rereading the sentences I’ve written – I feel defeated.  My red bird brain has succumbed to the hormones after all.  I find myself staring at my Mac for longer than necessary, the synapses of my brain firing with less enthusiasm than usual.  Staying on topic is difficult; finishing an essay – impossible.  Sometimes, in conversation, my husband has to help me with words.  That thing on the kitchen counter?  Ah, yes – a coffee maker.  The thing we use to walk the dog?  Right.  A leash.

To make myself feel better about this incapacitation I did a little research.  A study published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that 81% of women suffer memory loss and word retrieval problems during pregnancy.  The article called this impairment “significant” – though certainly not permanent – and I rejoiced.  In 1998, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published a study confirming pregnant women’s memory loss and word retrieval issues would be most significant in the third trimester.  Another study cited “brain overload” and “memory dysfunction.”  Hooray!

It is hard to be a writer; now I know it is even harder to be a pregnant writer.  I wish I’d done this research months ago. I thought I was just losing my edge because I’m no longer in graduate school.  So – as of today I’m cutting myself a little slack; I am preening my feathers at the yellow bird table.  Forgive me if my blog postings don’t make sense, or if you find them boring, or if I write that something is “obvious” rather than “obsequious.” My red bird brain has flown South for the remainder of winter.  Here’s hoping it’ll come back to me this spring.

O Holiday

~ towles ~ Leave a comment

332697372_a1f37d6614.jpg

All this week, I have been battling a terrible cold. The cold began innocently enough – a little tickle in the back of my throat, lethargy at 10 am, that kind of thing. I don’t get sick often and I had forgotten how rotten a cold can be, how paralyzing and depressing. As I sat on the couch on Monday, unable to sleep but near tears because I felt so bad, I got angry.

This cold was screwing up my holiday season.

I put on a Harry Connick Christmas cd in an effort to lift my spirits. I positioned myself on the couch so I could see our Christmas tree. I even made myself a cup of hot chocolate and sprinkled copious amounts of mini-marshmallows on top of it, but to no avail. The cold wanted nothing to do with Christmas. In fact, putting forth the effort to be more Christmasy in the midst of my malaise only made me feel worse.

Right now, as I write this, I am in recovery (though not quite recovered) and therefore in a more genuinely festive mood. I’ve chosen to work this morning at our neighborhood Caribou, and from the window by which I am perched I can see a little girl wearing a pink jacket over a red, plaid Christmas dress (white tights, black patent leather shoes) chasing a bird. She is with her mother, and when they walk into the coffee shop – to meet the girl’s dad, who looks overjoyed when they appear – everyone smiles at them.

For some reason, seeing this happy family makes me feel more spirited than I have all week, and there is no Christmas tree in sight, nothing truly holiday-inspired here except for a fake, too-hot fire in the center of the room and the lingering sound of a muffled, poorly sung “Feliz Navidad” (mixed with the grinding, steamy latte-making sounds coming from the Barista).

This simple scene reminds me to slow down; to allow my body to mend itself; to stop trying so hard to make Christmas happen; to sit and wait for spirit-lifting scenes to appear in surprising places and forms.

I am a huge fan of the holiday season – even at its most crazy points – but, as I emerge from my cold-induced stupor, I wish for you the kind of Christmas that allows you to rest, to look out a window and watch a little girl chasing birds. I hope for you cold weather, a warm dog at the end of your bed, and good health. And while you’re celebrating, have a holiday toddy for me – Baby K’s a bit too young for bourbon-spiked eggnog.

31

~ towles ~ 2 Comments

 94425785_d6a2c74601.jpg

Last week, I turned 31.  Age doesn’t bother me much, mainly because I still feel young and because I know I am loved.   I have found that this second, sappy-sounding factor goes a long way in securing youthfulness – and I’m not talking just about romantic love, but dog-love, friend-love, God-love, whatever sort of love comes around.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because of a birthday gift my husband gave me.  We went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and when we sat down in the booth he brought out a fat stack of envelopes and put them on the table. APK is one of the funnest and/or most mischievous people I know; in the seven years we’ve been together, he’s taken me on scavenger hunts, stumped me with riddles that lead to great surprises and planned curiously creative Mega-Dates (a term he coined).

So – I was intrigued, but not surprised, to see a stack of envelopes in front of me on the dinner table.  There were thirty-one in all.  APK explained that instead of writing me a note in a birthday card, he’d decided that it would be more fun if he wrote down thirty-one things he admired about me on individual sheets of paper and sealed them in individual envelopes and let me open them one at a time.

This may be one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten, and I still haven’t even opened all the envelopes.  Some of the messages APK wrote down for me are romantic, but not all of them.  Many of them are empowering compliments, compliments that remind me to rest and be who I am, or to write what I want to write, or to remember, simply, that I am loved.  I put the notes and envelopes in a box, and it’s like the box is filled with magic.  When I am tired or grumpy, or when I stop believing in myself, or when I wish someone were around to say something nice to me, I pull out the notes and my day is at least incrementally better, if not turned around completely.  I think I’m going to decorate my office with a few of them.

I wish everyone had a box like this; in fact, I think everyone should.  People don’t offer others sincere compliments often enough.

After my graduation from college I went on a road trip out West with two good friends, ML and CF.  Somewhere between Wenatchee, Washington and Redding, California, we started playing “The Compliment Game.”  The Compliment Game’s objective was to make everyone in the car feel great, to tell each person encouraging things we’d heard other individuals say about them, but that they’d never heard directly.

One friend might have told me how great CF’s witty sense of humor is, for example, or what a calming presence ML has in times of crisis, but the compliments never quite made it to the intended recipient.  For almost an hour, we connected the dots, making quick work of a long drive and forming one of the two-week trip’s more memorable moments.  I don’t even remember now what compliments were offered to me then, but I remember feeling totally surprised by them, as if I’d just opened a little envelope made out, especially, to me.

Giving people compliments can be a difficult thing to do, especially if the recipient isn’t someone you know well.  Doing so requires humility, a willingness to be somewhat vulnerable, and an intrinsic belief in one’s self.  But it’s also life-giving and can therefore be addictive – kind of like a service project that only requires you to be sincere.

The Writing Life

~ towles ~ 2 Comments

 195783511_37ed17a1cf.jpg

“Freedom lies in being bold.” – Robert Frost

When I tell people I’m a writer, they get very excited. I’m not sure what they imagine when I tell them about my profession, but the reactions I’ve received imply something really dreamy – as if my days are filled with the kind of exhilaration also known by Arctic explorers and trapeze artists.

The truth is, when I am actually writing my days do sometimes feel bound only to creativity and adventure. When I am plowing fields of words or walking uncharted terrain with a new character, life really could not be better. But given the way most of my days shape up – the query letters, mostly bound for rejection, the internal and external land mines I must navigate, the “writing jobs” that pay only $10/hour – I find these strangers’ enthusiasms mystifying.

I wonder if I have somehow missed out on the hidden magic that lies within a writer’s life. I envy those who think for me a life of full-time reading, creativity, bliss. I wonder if it wouldn’t just be better to imagine myself a writer, and this edges me closer to the other side: the side that believes in practicality; the side that heralds the decision to become a bank teller, a Jeanie, or a dog walker. (I have considered, at one point or another, all three.)

Yet, if there is truth to Robert Frost’s quote, above, then I am on a path to freedom, allbeit crooked and kind of muddy. Claiming space for myself as a writer – despite what the world would like to tell me about other, more practical, “worthwhile” professions – is one of the boldest things I’ve ever done.

I’ve been reading Annie Dillard’s The Writer’s Life and have been so encouraged to learn of the land minds she, a Pulitzer-prize winning author, navigates as she writes. She must have a room without a view; she questions the accessibility of her work. She wonders why she spends her time doing something that she dislikes so often, and why she didn’t choose to be a ferry operator or a wood splitter instead.

I haven’t made it all the way through Dillard’s book to know her answer yet, but I think it must have something to do with Robert Frost. There is freedom in being bold, in taking the risk on oneself — just as there is freedom to be found in the knowledge one pulls from themselves or from their subjects as they’re writing.

Donald Hall has said, “Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing,” and I think he could not be more right. The people who make it at this job today have a mental and emotional toughness I am only just now coming to realize. The industry demands that writers have it, demands that they be able to maintain artistic integrity AND sell out the shelves at Barnes and Noble.

While on a recent road trip, Andrew and I popped Thoreau’s Walden into the tape player and listened as his beautiful language rolled past. I began to wonder what his book proposal – had he written one – would have looked like, what sort of marketing spin he could have offered to an agent, how he would have convinced him or her that at least ten or twenty thousand people would want to buy his book, if not more. The sad truth of the matter is that beautiful writing and timeless, overarching themes (alone) don’t appear to sell books anymore, and I wonder how many Thoreaus the world is missing out on.

This, in practice, is not a very good thing to think about, and I do not encourage it. However, it’s worth mentioning in a public forum because I want to urge people – not just other writers or teachers, etc. but regular American people – to look beyond the bestseller list, to explore a book or (!) a literary journal (!) or a magazine that might be intriguing and/or delightful, but just slightly off the beaten path.

Oh, does everything come back to Robert Frost? Go take the road less traveled by …

Great With Child – A Book Review

~ towles ~ 1 Comment

100_1197.jpg

** I’ve decided to take my friend Richard’s advice and begin reviewing books on my blog.  I’m hoping that this will motivate me to read more voraciously.  ** 

There are a lot of books on the market about pregnancy, and even more, I’m sure, about parenting. I dislike these books. I say this a few weeks into my third trimester after receiving (from well-meaning friends and acquaintances) a stack of them almost as tall as my bedside table.

Of these many texts, the ones I’ve thumbed through have left me feeling somewhat uneasy, or alarmed, or angry.  I nearly threw one across the room.  The marketers of these books impose a sort of moral authority over pregnant women, suggesting through various means that one will be an unfit mother unless she reads What to Expect When You’re Expecting from cover to cover.  The books also appear to be written by people who might also, say, have too-strong opinions about things like the NRA, or taxes, or the space shuttle program. Like heat-seeking missiles, the writers target with remarkable focus expectant mothers’ unique vulnerabilities, sending already tweaked-out hormones into a new and utterly unpredictable frenzy.  The authors of these books take on the sort of know-it-all tone that used to make me want to hit someone hard with a kickball when I was in middle school.

My doctor’s first word of advice to me, when I was just eight weeks along, was to rely on her when I had questions or fears and to avoid all books and web sites concerning pregnancy and childbirth. She needn’t have worried.

But among the stack of pedantic, agenda-driven pregnancy books there is one shining gem: Great with Child by Beth Ann Fennelly. Fennelly is a poet and professor of writing at Old Miss who wrote a series of encouraging letters to her friend Kathleen during K’s pregnancy. In Great With Child – the book that resulted from these missives – Fennelly, who herself has two children, gives pregnancy and parenthood its due while celebrating (and sometimes bemoaning) its mysteries and its madness. She offers Kathleen both grace and freedom, covering topics from miscarriage to the administration of pain medication to work/life balance with a calm, supportive, reassuring voice.

Great With Child will not tell expectant mothers when their babies’ ear drums are forming, this is true, but Fennelly’s poetic sensibilities offer readers a broader, more literary and more powerfully feminist view of what it means to be “expecting.”